FLAshMoB

Functional Amyloid Chimera for Marine Biosensing

Coordinator

Prof Paola Giardina, University of Naples Federico II, Italy

Consortium

Project Abstract

The aim is to develop small, portable, easy to use, and robust biosensor platforms to monitor marine contaminants with high sensitivity and specificity, offering the ability to work on site and in a wide range of matrices. The bases for the development of the miniaturized sensors are chimera proteins endowed with both the adhesive properties of a self-assembling amyloid moiety and the recognition ability of specific proteins, such as:

1. laccase, an oxidative enzyme useful for sensing aromatic pollutants, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and endocrine disrupting chemicals
2. Arsenate reductase, an extremophilic enzyme to be used for specific arsenic detection
3. Antibodies against marine toxins from algae, such as saxitoxin and domoic acid
4. Glutathione S-transferase (GST), a multifunctional protein useful for the detection of the total heavy metals content.

FLAshMoB is funded by the MarTERA partners Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR), French National Research Agency (ANR) and Spanish Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) and co-funded by the European Union.